What I learned during a five (!) hour long informal debate with two statists...

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McDuffie Posted: Sat, Aug 15 2009 12:34 PM

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The debate started with healthcare. During this phase of the debate, I didn't get into the details of any current or past government healthcare plan. I just went straight for the gun in the room. During this phase of the debate I learned that:

• There is a 0% chance that if you stop paying your taxes that the police will come to your house and put your life in danger. To think that there is a chance of that happening is paranoia. In fact, there isn't even that much of a chance that the government will ever bother you about it. Why? Because taxation is voluntary.
• That drug manufacturers wouldn't have the money to make new drugs.

During the second phase of the debate, which was about taxation and economics, I learned that:

• Being born in a country with tax laws obligates you to pay your taxes.
• If you don't pay your taxes, you are a thief.
• If you discovered that the price of water in the town next to yours was $10 a bottle, this may or may not be a signal that there is a water shortage. If you then loaded up your truck with water bottles, and drove to the next town to sell the water, you might drive the price up or down, depending on if there really is a water shortage, or if the businesses there are just greedily charging too much for a bottle of water.

The third and final phase of the debate (the longest) was about roads. During this phase I learned that:

• If the government collapsed tomorrow, no one would have an incentive to buy and/or sell goods and/or services. We would all just lay down and die, I suppose. ( I asked him to repeat this one three times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding him.)
• A profit seeking motive would not be sufficient for a gas station owner to build a gas station on a long stretch of highway, dozens or hundreds of miles from the nearest town.
• If some crazy person did build a road in the middle of nowhere, and some nut did decide to build a gas station, no business would be stupid or crazy enough to bring you gasoline and diesel to sell.
• You have to first make a profit in order to have the money to build a private road, or a hotel, restaurant or gas station on a private road (again, I asked him two or three times to repeat this, because I didn't want to misunderstand him).
• You can't have a business that is based on the needs of people (e.g. people who are on a lonely stretch of road and need gas)
• If you operated a gas station on a private road, in the middle of nowhere, you would have to get the business of every single driver on that road or your business would fail.

I also learned a terrific debate tactic: if you are debating someone, and he says something erudite, you can reword it, repeat it back to him and pretend as if you are providing him with new information.

Another tactic: if you make a statement, and your opponent refutes it, just say "that's irrelevant". This works every time.

Oh wait, it doesn't.

Now, I made absolutely sure that I understood what these douches were saying and what they believed. I did not want to do to them what i often happens to me, that is to say that I didn't want to debate a strawman. I wanted to take their beliefs on.

Also, I had mentioned that I served in the military at some point. It was relevant somehow, though I can't exactly recall the context. And the guy said, smugly, "So, you were in the military, huh?" And I said, "Yes." And he just sorta nodded his head with an SEG on his face, and I said, "What about it?" He said, "Oh nothing, I'll just leave that alone..."

Now, any idiot with one eye and half sense could see where he was going with that. So I pushed him and he said, just as I thought, that it was hypocritical of me to "sponge" off the government, while complaining about it.

I beat that charge back in about 5 seconds, and it was never brought up again. The answer, of course, is that I was a state-worshiping demi-socialist when I signed up for the military.

Anyway, that's how I spent my friday night.

Edit: Oh yeah, towards the end of the discussion, this guy said something about "The economic principles of..." and I literally cut him off mid-sentence and said, "Hold on a second: you and I both know that you don't know a single economic principle, so don't even say that phrase again."

And his response to that was to shut the **** up.

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Jon Irenicus replied on Sat, Aug 15 2009 12:40 PM

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Lesson learned: debating idiots is a zero-sum affair.

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liberty student replied on Sat, Aug 15 2009 1:07 PM

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So who was the bigger fool?  The guy you were debating with, or you for debating with him?

I'm just sayin, if you're gunna debate fools for 5 hours, I hope you had an open minded audience you could educated with your responses.  IMO, there is no bigger waste of time than debating someone whose mind is already made up.

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I. Ryan replied on Sat, Aug 15 2009 1:13 PM

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Wait -- was this in-person?

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McDuffie replied on Sat, Aug 15 2009 1:14 PM

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liberty student:

So who was the bigger fool?  The guy you were debating with, or you for debating with him?

Them.

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McDuffie replied on Sun, Aug 16 2009 1:06 AM

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I. Ryan:

Wait -- was this in-person?

Yes, it was live and in person, on an oil rig in the middle of nowhere.

And it wasn't as heated as I might have made it sound. The only tense point, where my smile disintegrated, was when the one dude tried to accuse me of hypocrisy.